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PRESS NOTICES. 



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COLORADO : 

And Homes in the New W^est. 

Price: paper embers, 75 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

** 'The New West' is the most breezy, interesting, and instructive little vol- 
ume which has fallen in our way for a long time." — Boston Traveller. 

"It is made as fascinating as a work of fiction by the charm of the style in 
which it is written, while it is also one of the best and most beautiful hand-books 
for travel in the West." — Zion^s Herald. 

" My six days' sojourn in Colorado last summer has made that wonderful 
State a reality to me instead of an abstraction. Its Alpine peaks haunt me still ; 
its crystal air seems like the memory of an upper sphere. All my enthusiasm has 
been kindled afresh by reading Rev. E. P. Tenney's small volume, ' The New 
West.'" — Theodore L. Cuyler, in iV. Y. Evangelist. 



BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
CORONATION : 

A Story of the Forest and the Sea. 

One vol., square i6mo, 394 pp. Price $1.50. 

"A book of singular freshness, power and originality. . . . Beyond any 
thing since Thoreau, it is an out-of-door book. . . . One seems to breathe 
the salt air, and hear the sound of the surf, till one is homesick for the sea." — 
Literary World. 

"The author reconciles one to storm, mud and swamp, and all sorts of 
things disagreeable to the natural man, as commonly found. . . . The book 
is instinct with the very life of forest, mountain, and sea." — The Advance. 

" ' Coronation' exhibits remarkable vividness of imagination, intense love of 
nature, and deep knowledge of the New England and the universal human heart. 
But the subduing charm of the book is its combination of Greek and Hebrew 
fire. Its thought is cultured, incisive, and perfectly free ; but its loyalty to the 
highest ideas of the religious life is so manly and unapologetic as to be at times 
overawing. — Joseph Cook. 

"A book which has given me a pure joy, unlike any I have felt since I first 
read Emerson's 'Nature.'" — Caroline H. Dall, in Christian Register. 



)_v) 



"Wholesome, hopeful, and faithful the book is, showing an individuality in 
the author a little like some of the wild fruits on which his wanderers feed. We 
recommend ' Coronation ' to the enforced dwellers in cities. They . . . will 
feel, while they read, as if they too went 

' Plod, plod, along the featureless sand,' 
and caught the blowing surf on their face." — The Nation. 



AGAMENTICUS. 

i6mo. 267 pp. Price $1.25. 

" President Tenney has founded his little book upon very thorough and 
careful studies of the time and people pictured, and his reproduction of the 
picturesque life of Agamenticus is a particularly fine bit of artistic work." — 
Nc'M York Evening Post. 

"It is by far the best picture we have of the colonial life of that day." — 
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D,D. 

"This original book is like a salt breeze for freshness, and the odor of pine 
woods for spice." — Golden Rule . 

" There is not a page that the reader will care to skip." — Boston Journal. 

" Mr. Tenney's work reminds the reader of ' Margaret,' and other writings of 
the late Rev. Sylvester Judd." — Portland Press. 

" It deserves to be placed among the classic books of the times. It is an 
eccentric novel from beginning to end, but its story is consistent in all its varia- 
tions from the customary regularity." — Providence Journal . 



THE SILENT HOUSE. 

i6ino. 156 pp. Price $1.00. 

" It is full of beautiful passages and choice selections, and might well be 
called a prose poem." — The Morning Star. 

"There is something very attractive, and almost dainty, about this little 
volume. It is one of those books whose value is in an inverse proportion to its 
size." — New Englander. 

"Pungency of thought and expression, great appositeness of citation, and 
profound spirituality of tone, give to this wcjrk a high rank and permanent 
value." — Bibliotheca Sacra. 



Sent through the Mail upon Receh't of Price by 
LEE & SHEPARD, BOSTON. 



MAP OF COLORADO. 



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COLORADO: 



HOMES IN THE NEW WEST. 



U . O. J-> U n Lj i:\ U \Ji 






REC'D JAN 261 j^jj 



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COLORADO: 



HOMES IN THE NEW WEST. 



By E. p. TENNEY, 

(1 

President of Colorado College. 






Comprising the Seventh Thousand of The New West, 
Revised ana Illustrated. 



BOSTON : 
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK: 

CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM. 
1880. 






Printed by F"kank Wood, 
Boston, Mass. 



W*ttHW 




THE 

GOLD HUNTERS. 



The search for 
silver and gold 
which has taken 
a noble class of emigrants 
from England to Australia, 
reproducing the highest 
civilization of Europe in 
the South Pacific, and 
which has built upon our 
own Pacific coast one of 
the foremost States of the 
Union, is now leading 
multitudes of our best 
citizens to make homes 



RAINBOW FALLS, UTE PASS. 



12 COLORADO. 

for themselves upon the Rocky Mountain plateau. This 
passion for mining is the instrument of Providence in trans- 
ferring populations to new seats of empire. Albeit the 
resources of Colorado, and of other j^ortions of the New 
West, will sustain so vast a population that these regions 
would in any event be soon peopled by the ordinary laws of 
emigration, the process is quickened by the most astonishing 
discoveries of precious metal. 

If men once imagine that they can shovel up loose silver 
and gold as they would sand from a cellar, they will go far to" 
test fortune. And many of them — even if they are disap- 
pointed in mining — will make for themselves happy homes 
in mountain valleys or upon sunny plains. When men rushed 
to California, vast numbers who hoped to gather gold in 
heaps found themselves too poor to get out of the country, 
and too much fascinated with its climate and resources to 
wish to go, they remained to become the founders of a 
State. There are other employments than mining which 
prove remunerative ; and the development of the rich and 
varied resources of the New West will furnish homes for 
unnumbered millions 




GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF THE GODS. 



THE NEW WEST. 



Between the valley of the Mississippi — the Old West 

— and the Pacific slope lies the New West, a mountain 
plateau from three to six thousand feet high, upon which rise 
the Rocky Mountains. Take Wyoming, Colorado, New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Montana ; then 
add a minute fragment of fifty thousand square miles from 
western Dakota, comprising the Black Hills region, and you 
have the New West, — one third part of the United States, 

— as large as all that portion of country east of the Missis- 
sippi. Colorado is equal in size to Switzerland, New England, 
New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. Maps of Pennsylvania 
and New York would need to add Maryland and Rhode 
Island, to cover Colorado. Ohio could lie down twice within 
the boundaries of the Centennial State, and then leave room 
enough for West Virginia and Connecticut. Kansas and 
Iowa together are not its match in square miles. Colorado 



THE NEW WEST. I 5 

has almost as many acres as Old England and New, Men 
team goods from Colorado Springs through Ute Pass, follow- 
ing a longer road than that from Boston to Philadelphia, and 
yet they do not go out of their own State. 

The topography of the New West may be in general 
described thus : — 

The valley of the Mississippi extends four hundred and 
fifty miles west of the river ; we then cross the elevated 
buffalo plains, seven hundred miles long and three hundred 
miles in width; then the Rocky Mountains, — in parallel 
ranges from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand feet high, 
inclosing parks, at an elevation of eight or nine thousand 
feet, — three hundred and fifty miles wide ; then a width of 
seven hundred miles to the Sierra Nevada. The Great 
American Desert is upon the western verge of the last 
described belt. It is from seventy-five to two hundred and 
fifty miles wide. No east and west line can cross arable 
land all the way from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra.^ 

Men who forecast the future of America will be interested 
in a statement of those elements of wealth which indicate 
the capacity of this mountain plateau to sustain population. 

Aside from Idaho, — no small portion of which is, like 
Oregon, admirably adapted to sustain a large agricultural 
population, — the New West resembles California in its 
general characteristics. 

^ Vide Wheeler's Preliminary Report on Nevada, etc. 



GRAZING 



One of the prime industries, when it is fully developed, 
will be grazing. In the Northern portion of this region it is 
necessary to make some provision for winter — even so far 
south as Colorado Springs ; but beef-cattle and sheep graze 
all the year round, without cut-feed or shelter, in southern 
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Montana, Idaho and 
Wyoming, find it needful to feed sheep only from five to 
fifteen days in winter, their cattle needing little more care 
than herds of buffalo. Utah and Arizona, which have so long 
sustained vast herds of deer and antelope, will soon be 
covered with domestic cattle. In any portion of the great 
plains wherever there is grass enough for pasturage, there 
may be found a water supply ; either from natural springs, 
by digging wells, or by forming reservoirs for the occasional 
rainfall. The perennial grasses of the plains take deep 
root, and find sufficient moisture ; olive-green grass covers 
the plains in. early summer, and the stalks remain green 
near their roots all through the heated term, while their tops 
dry into hay of so good quality that horses will leave the 
bottom lands to feed upon it. These stalks of sweet bunch 
grass are from six to twelve inches in height ; and they 
stand stiffly amid winter frosts, and are never broken down 
by excessive rain or snow. 

Stock and dairy-men who have had many years' experience 
in the valley of the Mississippi, and also on the great plains, 



THE NKW WEST. 



17 




I. BUFFALO GRASS 2. GRAMA GRASS. 

(Half Natural Size.) 



prefer these plains of the New West. There are, probably, 
seven hundred and fifty thousand cattle in Colorado, and one 
million six hundred and fifty thousand sheep. There are in 
the neighborhood of Colorado Springs, in El Paso County, 
three hundred thousand sheep and thirty-five thousand 
horses. Not less than two thousand persons in the State 
are engaged in herding. It is worth while to ride a thou- 
sand miles to see one of the most unique sights in America, 



iS 



COLORADO AND 



"a round-up" of the cattle-men: — a perfect pandemonium 
of circling riders, yelling like wild Indians, amid crying 
calves, bawling cows, fighting steers and bucking bronchos. 
" Half an acre of hat, a couple of revolvers and a bowie- 
knife, and a pair of circular-saw spurs" — this is your cow- 
boy of the Southwest. Whether he is swaggering, with 
strange oaths, upon a leisure day about the door of some 
dug-out whiskey cellar, or swinging his lasso from his swift 
saddle, or asleep in his blanket under the summer or win- 
ter constellations, this herder is a singular citizen of our 
Republic. 




A CITY OF THE PLAINS. 



But there is money in beef. Are not ten million of 
American and European capital now invested in Colorado 
cattle } The profit averages from twenty-five to fifty per 
cent., when the business is conducted intelligently. The 
cattle shipments and the wool clip already amount to more 
than one-third of the bullion product, as it stood before 
recent discoveries. In the future, when the slopes of both 
oceans are crowded, and the valley of the Mississippi is a 
garden, the great herding-ground of the continent will be on 
the plains of our New West. The present value of the hay- 
crop and pasturage of the United States — including dairy 
products, wool, and the increase of live stock — is nine hun- 
dred and seventy-three million dollars, which exceeds in 



THE NEW WEST. 



19 



value all the cotton, corn, wheat, and other farm products of 
the country.^ Is not the dairy product alone more than 
three hundred million ? Will not the broad pastures of 
the New West, which have fed the buffaloes for ages, 
some day contribute largely to the national wealth ? 




KANSAS GRASSES. 



^ Stewart's Irrigation, \->. iS. 



FARMING. 



Agricultural operations in the New West promise to 
be very profitable. Portions of Colorado and New Mexico, to 
the amount of four million acres, are watered by rains ; and 
the same is true of no small areas, here and there, in the 
mountains or near them, throughout the New West. But, in 
the main, irrigation is necessary, and the farms are planted 
on the borders of mountain streams fed by melting snow. 
The absence of a greensward upon the general face of the 
country is at once missed by the Eastern eye ; but a practical 
farmer soon learns that there is everyway an advantage if he 
can water his crops when he chooses. The crops are not 
injured by rain or its withholding. Drought spoils one-fourth 
of the crops of the world. Farming carried on by irrigation 
is much more profitable than in the ordinary process, and the 
land is kept in good heart by it through centuries.^ Chem- 

1 See Stewart's valuable work on irrigation, which is a standard authority. A 
foot of water is needed over the whole soil while the crops are growing. Three- 
fourths of our rain-fall runs off or comes at the wrong time of year for crops. 
The English derive more advantage from less rain-fall than we have, because it 
comes a little at a time during the season when it is most needed. American 
farmers. East and West, raise less per acre than they would by partial irrigation. 
The average crop all over the country might be largely increased by the systematic 
distribution of water from streams. Market gardening often suffers for want of 
water at a critical time. '* Growing plants contain from seventy to ninety-five per 

cent, of water The solid portion of the plant consists of matters 

which enter into it only while in solution in water No water, 

whether it be in the state of liquid or vapor, can enter into any other part of a 

plant than its roots The summer rain-fall in our climate is rarely, if 

ever, adequate to the requirements of what would be a maximum crop, cansistent 



THE NEW WEST. 21 

ical analysis of the soil of the New West shows that it is of 
a remarkably good quality, needing only the touch of water 
to produce the best crops in the country, notably of wheat. 
The wheat crop of the United States averages twelve bushels 
to the acre, — California twenty, Colorado twenty-eight. It 
will, on this account, support a large population in proportion 
to the surface cultivated. In estimating the agricultural 
resources of this region, the area of farming land may be, in 
respect to ability to support population, doubled, or nearly so, 
on account of the advantages of a good soil under irrigation. 
It will also support a larger population than the same land 
East, since it can be used mainly to raise vegetable food for 
man. In the Eastern States a farmer must set apart acres 
to raise hay and cattle, to keep the rest of his farm in good 
condition; and in the valley of the Mississippi hay must be 
raised to keep cattle through the winter : in general, neither 
of these necessities exists in the New West. The whole 
area of farm lands can be used for man's garden or granary. 
This consideration alone would be equal to adding, perhaps, 
one-third to the amount of arable land in the New West. 
While, therefore, that which can be irrigated is little com- 
pared with the whole surface, it is practically enough to sup- 
port a vast population. It is estimated that Colorado and 
New Mexico have agricultural resources to maintain ten 
million inhabitants. Professor Hayden's Atlas of Colorado, 



with the probabilities of the soil." [Stewart, page 9.] Water, when used in 
irrigation, " brings within reach of the plants a largely increased amount of nutri- 
ment. Water is the universal solvent. No water in its natural condition is pure. 
The water of springs and streams holds in solution or suspension a quantity of 
mineral and gaseous matters that possess high fertilizing value." [Page 18.] 
Irrigation has been used on the same soil two hundred years in New Mexico, with- 
out other fertilizing properties than that brought by the water. 

The British government has recently expended seventy million tlollars in irri- 
gating works in India. 



22 COLORADO AND 

recently issued, shows a much greater area of farm land than 
has been supposed to exist. Western and northwestern 
mountain valleys will prove very attractive. General Adams 
states that the Bear River bottom can support fifty thousand 
people. 

Farming in Colorado is at this time a decided success. 
There will be always a good market for garden and field pro- 
duce among the mining and trading people, on account of 
the limited area suitable for cultivation and the distance from 
competition. The farm lands will, therefore, have a com- 
paratively dense population at some future time. The rich 
Arkansas valley and the banks of rivers fed by the moun- 
tains, now comparatively desolate, will resound with the 
voices of children ; and happy homes will be scattered along 
the borders of all streams. 

Did not Daniel Webster once say in the United States 
Senate that the soil of California vv^as fit only to raise copper- 
heads and rattlesnakes } Did not the first settlers of Massa- 
chusetts Bay think the country west of Newton ill adapted to 
support population ? Did not the publicists of England, two 
hundred years ago, believe that the capacity of Great Britain 
to sustain population had been well tested .'' 

"The arable land and pasture," says Macaulay, " were not 
supposed, by the best political arithmeticians of that age, to 
amount to much more than half the area of the kingdom. 
The remainder was believed to consist of moor, forest and 
fen. These computations are strongly confirmed by the 
road-books and maps of the seventeenth century. From 
those books and maps it is clear that many routes which now 
pass through an endless succession of orchards, hay-fields 
and bean-fields, then ran through nothing but heath, swamp 
and warren. In the drawings of English Lindscapes made in 



THE NEW WEST. 23 

that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is 
to be seen, and numerous tracts, now rich with cultivation, 
appear as bare as Salisbury Plain. At Enfield, hardly out 
of sight of the smoke of the capitol, was a region of five and 
twenty miles in circumference which contained only three 
houses, and scarcely any inclosed fields. Deer, as free as in 
an American forest, wandered there by thousands. * * * 
"The red deer were then as common in Gloucestershire 
and Hampshire as they now are among the Grampian Hills. 
On one occasion Queen Anne, on her way to Portsmouth, 
saw a herd of no less than five hundred. The wild bull with 
his white mane was still to be found wandering in a few of 
the southern forests. The badger made his dark and tortu- 
ous hole on the side of every hill where the copse-wood grew 
thick. The wild- cats were frequently heard by night wailing 
around the lodges of the rangers of Whittlebury and Need- 
wood. The yellow-breasted marten was still pursued in 
Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed only inferior to that of 
sable. Fen eagles, measuring more than nine feet between 
the extremities of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast 
of Norfolk. On all the downs, from the British Channel to 
Yorkshire, huge bustards strayed, in troops of fifty or sixty, 
and were often hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of 
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered, during some 
months of every year, by immense clouds of cranes. * * * 
The number of inclosure act? passed since King George the 
Second came to the throne exceeds four thousand. The 
area inclosed under the authority of those acts exceeds, on a 
moderate calculation, ten thousand square miles. How many 
square miles which formerly lay waste have, during the 
same period, been fenced and carefully tilled by the proprie- 
tors, without any application to the legislature^ can oiily be 



24 COLORADO AND 

conjectured. But it seems highly probable that a fourth part 
of England has been, in the course of little more than a 
century, turned from a wild into a garden." 

The future historian of America will say, with some truth, 
that there were men of much intelligence in this age who 
did not suppose Colorado and the New West capable of 
sustaining a very large population, and that they did not 
think it important to pay much attention to the development 
of a well-ordered society in new regions. Wyoming has an 
agricultural area as large as Massachusetts and Connecticut ; 
timber land more extended than Michigan, and a grazing 
field larger than Kentucky.^ Montana is wonderfully rich in 
farm lands, timber and pasture, as well as in gold. New 
Mexico will raise food for as many people as New Eng- 
land. Arizona, now at last fairly rid of the avenging 
angel, the Apache, will soon make known her agricultural 
resources, which are sufficient to support a large population. 

While there are immense areas of bad lands and sections 
which no man ought to look upon, in various parts of the 
New West, yet, often, close beside the desolate regions, as 
in the San Francisco Mountain country, not fifty miles from 
the caiion of the Colorado River of the West, one finds large 
tracts which offer the most delightful homes in the world, — 
well watered with springs and streams, heavily timbered with 
gigantic pines, a black rich soil of decomposed lava, produc- 
ing without irrigation the heaviest crops of grain and pota- 
toes, and the most nutritious grasses winter and summer. 
Here it is possible to plant homes in little grassy parks or 
mountain meadows amid the timber, with horizon walls of 
ancient volcanic peaks, like Mount Agassiz, towering to great 
height, with only a light crown of snow so late as Christmas ; 

1 Strahorn's Wyoming, p. 2i. 



THE NEW WEST. 25 

homes in a most invigorating atmosphere, which will be 
established, at no distant day, by the thrifty Anglo-Saxon 
race, able to make a home anywhere, and eager to find out 
a place of promise for the next generations. To these chil- 
dren of the New West, the broad intervals of the Connecticut, 



MARBLE CANON. 



26 



COLORADO AND 




VIEW AT MOUTH OF THE LITTLE COLORADO. 



the rich lands of the Mohawk, and even the valley of the 
Kaw, will seem distant and far toward the sunrising ; but as 
the ages roll by, it will be seen that our English-speaking race 
has planted the highest culture of the world upon the banks 



THE NEW WEST. 



27 



of rivers now unknown in the central regions of the conti- 
nent. The wild gorges of the Colorado River of the West 
will be frequented by pleasure-seekers, and the strange 
scenery of this most unique portion of the planet will become 
familiar to the eyes of travelers from distant lands, as to 
those born and bred in those very regions. 




AN ENGLISH COTTAGE, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS. 

There is an admirable article in Fraser's Magazine for 
November, 1878, written in the January previous, by an 
English farmer whose home is upon the Divide not far from 
Colorado Springs. He is a true Englishman, fond of hunt- 
ing and wild life as well as the farm, prophesying that 



28 



COLORADO AND 



" crowds of Englishmen with small incomes, pensions, mili- 
tary and naval half-pay officers, will turn to this country of 
pure air and mountain scenery, where they can live like kings 
and bishops on one hundred pounds a year, in high health 
and spirits, shoot and fish after the manner of Isaac Walton, 
or stalk moose and deer, or go into the wilderness to win 
public money for wolves' heads like a shekari, and have no 
fear for the condition of their children, bent on building 
fresh homes on the western slopes of the Colorado 
mountains." 




CORN IN THE KAW VALLEY, KAN. 



It is a wonder that the twelve square miles of the Divide, 
which require no irrigation, and the nearly forty thousand 
acres of arable land near Colorado Springs, for twelve miles 
up and down the Fountain and Monument, are not already 
crowded closely by a farming population, with good society, 
the school, the church, the daily post, and a growing market 
near at hand. Of two hundred thousand acres under culti- 
vation in Utah, those lands are most valuable which are 
covered with heavy crops near Salt Lake City, comprising 
few acres easily managed. The neighborhood of any thrifty 



THE .VEIV WEST. 29 

town is attractive to those who will do well in tilling 
the soil. 

But this is not the country for men with absolutely no cap- 
ital ; neither is Kansas or Nebraska ; but in those favored 
States it probably requires less capital to obtain a large 
area of land, although the market may not be so favorable as 
in Colorado. The market depends on location. The neigh- 
borhood of growing towns or of rich mines, offers good loca- 
tion. With only one-eighth of Kansas now under cultivation, 
and already a population of nearly a million, the capacity of 
the State is little tested. Nebraska is certainly one of the 
best farming countries in the world, and probably more 
healthy than eastern Kansas, with its harvest time so hot as 
to require night-work. The statisticians upon the slopes of 
the Rocky Mountains sit down coolly with pencil and paper, 
and figure out the number of persons who will certainly 
become invalids in the States watered by the Mississippi, 
and that river of mud, Missouri ; and who will certainly move 
to the upland farms, the pastures, the mines, or the pleasant 
towns of the New West. Colorado does not need to-day 
more land under ditch, but more men to fence and farm 
and raise market produce. A few miners may become very 
rich, but the average farmer will do better than the average 
miner. A return to farming, as an employment, on the part 
of multitudes of men will adjust social disturbances, and make 
easy the hard times. If five or ten acres of land, worth from 
fifty to a hundred dollars an acre, be not enough, it may be 
enough to begin with, if well located; and no location is so 
good as the immediate neighborhood of growing towns, and 
a rapidly increasing population of non-producers of farm 
products. 




NEAR MANiTOU MINERAL SPRINGS. 



TIMBER. 



A COUNTRY is naked without trees. Of the whole Rocky 
Mountain plateau, probably not more than one-fifth or one- 
fourth of the country is timbered.^ These forests have been 
fearfully wasted by Indian fires, kindled to drive game. 
"The amount of timber used for economic purposes, will be 
more than replaced by the natural growth." ^ That the 
region, as a whole, has timber enough for the use of the 
country, is indicated by Hayden's map of Colorado forests. 



1 Powell's Arid Lands of the U. S., p. 23. 

2 Ibid, p. 24. 



THE NEW WEST. 



31 



There are five million acres of woodland in New Mexico. 
No such variety of growth, however, is seen as one finds in 
the East. The riv(ir-bottoms are lined with scrub-oak, box- 
elder and cotton-wood. We find the ash, the pinon pine, the 
mesquit — the best of fuel. The evergreens — fir, hemlock 
and pine — cover the mountains.^ Experiments show that the 
trees and fruits of the latitude of Colorado can be grown 
there. Fruit culture is already becoming an important 
industry. 



1 The memorial to Congress, adopted by the Constitutional Convention of Colo- 
rado, in relation to the forests of the State, is a very valuable document. 
202 of Hough's Report on Forestry. 




GLEN EYRIE, 



MINING. 



New Spain — comprising California, Utah, southern Col- 
orado, New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico — has pro- 
duced, since the discovery of America, more than one-third 
of the precious metals of the world. The reopening of the 
old mines, near Santa Fe, is likely to be followed by a general 
search for the sources which yielded so largely in the early 
Spanish occupation. When Arizona. is developed, her mines 
will surprise the world. It is a fact not easily forgotten, that 
in this district a single specimen of pure silver was once 
found of a hundred and sixty pounds weight. Montana has 
washed or picked a hundred million dollars in gold. The 
mines of Colorado, even before the recent discoveries in 
Leadville, yielded more than those of California in 1870. 
The history of California and Australia is now repeating itself 
in the New West, and an immense population will search for 
wealth hidden in the mountains. The finding of Aladdin's 
lamp in Leadville marks a new era in the mining world. 
Midas was poor when compared with the owners of these 
mines, whose fame has gone out to the ends of the earth. 

The average man succeeds in mining as well as in the 
ordinary commercial business of the country, in which, how- 
ever, the failures are more than ninety per cent. Sixteen 
million in gold have been taken from four mines in Gilpin 
County, and the stream is as reliable as the flow of the 
Hudson. But of more than a hundred and twenty gold 
companies operating within a mile and a half of these mines, 
the greater part have not been successful. The Georgetown 




GULCH MINING. 



34 COLORADO AND 

district yields some sixty tons of silver in a year. There is 
no hour of day or night, year after year, when the sound of 
the pick or the sound of the blast does not echo among the 
mountains. But the wealth is not evenly distributed. The 
average prospector is poor. The multitude is not likely soon 
to be rich. Men work for years without earning more than 
their salt. Many of the successful, by a turn of the wheel, 
lose their property in new investments. 

Was it not said that the Spaniards, when they went to 
Chili, fancied the water flowing through gold veins more 
delicate in flavor and more wholesome than that of common 
springs ? There are not many miners in the New West who 
can confirm the tradition as to the taste of the water ; but 
they can never rest searching the metallic veins, in spite of 
water. Whether or not they are successful in gold and silver 
mining, there is much satisfaction in contemplating the 
variety of mineral wealth in the New West. 

Inexhaustible store of excellent iron ore is found in south- 
ern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Near the iron is 
the best coal west of Pennsylvania. For coking, it is pro- 
nounced by experts to be equal to the Connellsville coal. 
Furnaces and rolling-mills will abound in this region in the 
future. That this industry will be developed rapidly, and 
that to a great extent, is certain, since there is no coal for 
four hundred miles east, no good coal in Mexico, Nevada or 
California. The coal is now sent to Nevada for smelting. 
A vast number of people will some day find employment in 
picking to pieces and manufacturing that iron mountain 
which now rises more than ten thousand feet high, near 
inexhaustible beds of coal, in Colfax County, New Mexico. 
The Arizona coal will play no mean part in the civilization of 
the future. 



THE NEW WEST. 35 

When it comes, however, to the question of permanent 
homes, it is likely that those who are most successful in 
mining industries will, whenever it is practicable, seek to 
plant their families in some pleasant town outside the moun- 
tains, rather than amid these rugged camps of the hills. 
"Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look 
straight before thee, ponder the path of thy feet," — is an 
appropriate golden text for children of mining districts, 
where the whole country is full of prospect holes. The zig- 
zagging paths up and down brown bare rocky hillsides, amid 
piles of ore and tumbling cabins, lead to picturesque homes, 
many of which are very homelike; and the children born 
under the bright sunshine nine or ten thousand feet above 
the sea, are keen-eyed as mountain eagles, and vigorous as 
the wild creatures which made their homes in such places 
before the advent of man. But in many camps the work is 
light in winter, on account of heavy snows, and the men seek 
permanent homes elsewhere. Such communities, therefore, 
as Greeley, Longmont, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs 
and Pueblo, have a large population of the families of those 
who are engaged in mining. 




STATE UNIVERSITY, BOULDER. 




GRAY'S PEAK. 

THE CLIMATE. 



When the question comes up about establishing homes in 
a new country various considerations are to be taken into 
account. There are many who believe that no one need 
have a more home-like region than the neighborhood of the 



THE NEW WEST. 'i^'J 

rugged New England coast, in constant sight of the sparkling 
waters, and within sound of the unceasing beat of the billows 
of the Atlantic. They love, too, the culture of our older 
commonwealths. Others cleave to the sunny South, with 
homes embowered by roses, in an atmosphere laden with the 
odor of orange blossoms, amid growing cotton, and in sight of 
the rice fields, and the warm waves of a southern sea. 
Others are most at home upon green prairies, burdened by 
corn and alive with young cattle. The blue waters of the 
northern lakes attract some to their shores ; and others love 
to dwell upon the banks of great rivers flowing through 
golden grain fields and the most fertile gardens of the 
world. But with multitudes it is a consideration of health. 
"The empire of climate," says Montesquieu, "is the most 
powerful of all empires." West of the valley of the Missis- 
sippi the land rises, sloping like a wide roof toward the 
Rocky ridgepole of the continent ; so that this part of the 
country is too high and dry for malarial diseases, asthma, 
bronchitis, or consumption. Consumption may be prevented 
by moving to Colorado ; those who go with quick consump- 
tion fixed upon them find that the disease is accelerated by 
the rarity of the atmosphere ; but chronic consumption is 
cured by the climate. Colorado soil and air are so dry that 
an axe left out of doors will not rust, if it be covered from 
snow and rain. Meat will dry up before it will spoil. There 
is no dew-fall. Save in the mountains and in their near 
neighborhood, there is very little snow and a general 
absence of rain. Warm currents from the South Pacific 
touch the mountains, modifying the air. I have seen men 
plowing in February eight thousand feet above the sea near 
Central. In the vicinity of Colorado Springs sheep graze 
all winter, six thousand feet above the sea, in the latitude of 



38 COLORADO AND 

Washington. Parties have indulged in picnics out of doors 
upon a given day each week for ten weeks of December, 
January, and February. In the winter months of '78, 
and the March following, there was only one unpleasant Sun- 
day. In March there were twenty-four "picnic" days. A 
weather record of two years at Colorado Springs gives, — in 
one year three hundred and twenty-two fair and clear days, 
and forty-four cloudy ; the year following, three hundred and 
twelve fair and clear, and fifty-three cloudy. Colorado Col- 
lege is now one of the government stations for meteorologi- 
cal observations. The daily record by Professor Loud 
indicates conditions of climate, which will attract invalids 
to this spot. 

The storms are short. During four hundred days in a 
recent year at Rosita, in the wonderful Wet Mountain valley, 
there were not more than twenty-four hours in succession in 
which the sun did not shine. A Denver record gives no day 
in one year, in which, during some part of the day, the sun 
could not be located in the sky. A table of six years shows 
an average of one hundred and forty-seven clear days, and 
one hundred and fifty-four fair ; clear and fair three hundred 
and one days for each six years. One woman, who had 
visited many climes, and who declared that during ten 
months of the year she preferred the climate of Colorado 
to that of heaven itself, — had not journeyed in Paradise. 

As for me, I will speak the truth about the climate, though 
I die for it. It is not in the least celestial. Dante would have 
added new horrors to the infernal regions, if he had been 
familiar with Colorado sand-storms. The weather is too hot 
in summer and too cold in winter, save in certain portions 
of the mountains where it is cool in summer and warm in 
winter. The lowest record of the thermometer averaged, for 



THE NEW WEST. 



39 



the six years, twenty below zero ; and the highest, during six 
years, averaged ninety-nine. The winter nights are always 
very cold, and the days usually warm between ten o'clock 
and four. 

Some thirty-five years ago the winter was so severe that 
vast numbers of buffaloes perished by the depth of snow 
near Colorado Springs. The mercury has sometimes touched 
thirty and even thirty-six below zero at Denver, and in the 
mountain towns. The cold snowy winter of '78-79, was 
however less damaging to stock than was anticipated. And 
invalids probably suffered as little as they would have done 
during the same winter elsewhere. South Carolina and 
Florida and the Southern States experienced unprecedented 
cold. The Mississippi valley was colder than for twenty 
years previous. And the average temperature in England 
was lower than for a score of years. 

As to the heat, it is well known that there are sometimes 
waves of heat sweeping over the whole country ; and 
when my friend recorded ninety-eight degrees in the shade 
in Colorado Springs in the summer of '78, there were one 
hundred and forty-five deaths by sun-stroke, and two thou- 
sand so prostrated by heat as to require medical attendance, 
in St. Louis within seven days. Wisconsin and Iowa were 
smitten in city and country; Chicago, New York, and Boston 
were in furnace heat. The dry air of Colorado renders the 
heat more bearable, and the shade is usually a shield from hot 
rays, and the summer nights are so cool as to be cold before 
morning. " I hate Colorado when it is hot," says the same 
energetic person who says, " I hate Colorado when there is 
snow on the ground." There are from sixty to ninety days in 
every year in which every sane person will hate the climate ; 
it being just such weather as prevails in the valley of the 



40 



COLORADO AND 



Mississippi and upon the Atlantic coast half the time. Do 
not disagreeable winds including sand-storms, frequently visit 
Santa Barbara ? Are there not "northers" at San Antonio, 
in which the mercury falls forty degrees in forty minutes ; 
coming and going no one can tell when ? Are there no 
wretched days at Aiken, and upon the Florida coast? 
Southern Europe either faints in winter under hot winds from 
the south, or freezes under cold winds from the mountains of 
the North. The average man living in Colorado finds the 
climate vastly more to his mind than that in the country he 
came from ; and if he came from some famous sanitarium, 
he left behind him many causes of complaint. Albeit he 
may soon find the new conditions ill-suited to him. 

One of the worst things I know about Colorado is that 
there is so much " exceptional" weather. It is a mountain 
climate subject to changes. Do not all well-bred physicians 
claim that invalids can keep out of doors the entire year 
except, say, four days in a month ? If, now, to state it 
strongly, an invalid can in a bad season get out of doors only 
five days in a week instead of six, it is a bad climate. But 
what shall we say of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, and 
regions where the roads are impassable for mud during some 
months every year? What of the raw atmosphere of the 
Eastern coast, where clouds, snow, rain, wind, sharp and 
severe changes, kill out-right thousands of semi-invalids 
every year ? 

One-third of the population of the plains in Colorado are 
reconstructed invalids. When compared with other portions 
of the United States, the whole New West is a sanitarium. 
The northern portion is comparatively mild in winter, the 
forty-sixth degree in Montana being as warm as Philadelphia, 
on the forty-first ; and the southern portion relatively cool 



THE NEW WEST. 



41 



in summer, Santa Fc, at seven thousand feet above the sea, 
being attractive in August. Lieut. Col Dodge, whose life 
has been spent upon the great plateau, says in his admirable 
book upon the Plains, that in spite of hail and sand-storms, 
the summer and autumn weather of the high plains is as near 
perfect as it is possible to imagine. 

Damp nights and incipient consumption are needless. 
Those who live upon the Atlantic sea-board in a climate that 
is killing them by inches, can get out of it upon any Tuesday 
afternoon and find themselves upon Saturday in a dry and 
sunny country. And as to the question of bread to eat, as 
well as air to breathe, any "head of the house" who is not 
made irresolute by illness or chained down by the rim of the 
horizon, can within any week satisfy himself upon that point, 
and then move his household within a month. 

" I do not believe that there is a well woman in Illinois," 
said a friend, who knew too well the diseases incident to life 
in a State which is a hot-house in summer and a mire of mud 
in winter. Multitudes of people in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi are slowly dying within two days' ride of perfect health. 
Invalids die in Colorado because they seek the remedy too 
late. That portion of Colorado ^south of the Divide is more 
favorable for winter residence than north of it. Denver 
affords the comforts and conveniences of an Eastern city ; 
and the winter climate is paradise when compared with New 
England or Iowa. But in the great storms which rarely 
occur, Colorado Springs has little snow when regions to the 
east and north are heavily drifted. Denver can sometimes 
boast of sleigh-riding when there is no snow to speak of in 
Colorado Springs. There is always less snow-fall in the 
southern portion of the State, and the changes of weather 
are less severe. New Mexico will be still better, when the 



42 



COLORADO. 



country is fitted to receive invalids. Families with the seeds 
of early death in them will do well to fly for refuge to these 
central mountain regions of America. The invalids of the 
United States comprise not a small part of the population ; 
and many of those who have property will, as they become 
acquainted with the facts, move into one of the beautiful 
towns at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. 




BALANCE ROCK, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS. 




HIGH SCHOOL, GREELEY. 



EMIGRATION 



The population of the New West is, probably, at this 
time, not far from eight hundred thousand, — 

" The first low wash of waves, where soon 
Shall roll the human sea." 

The laws which govern the westward movement of popu- 
lation are now well understood. Between i860 and 1870 a 
population of three million moved into Illinois, Iowa, Wis- 
consin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas. From 
these very States during the last decade a large emigration 
has been moving to the newer West. The Commissioner of 
the Land Office reports that six hundred thousand people 
took up their residence in the new parts of the West and 
Southwest in 1878 ; and that a population of two* and a half 
million have taken up homes in the West and South during 
the latter half of the present decade. This stream of emi- 
gration has begun to pour into that third part of our conti- 
nent now sparsely peopled ; and the resources of the New 



44 



COLORADO AND 



West will be rapidly developed within the years next before 
us. Men are now living who remember when central New 
York and Northern Pennsylvania was " the West ; " and there 
are those now living who will see Colorado and the Rocky 
Mountain regions with a comparatively dense population. 
Emigration will soon occupy by hundreds of thousands, and 
then by millions, the eastern border of the New West. Not 
many years can pass before the territories will become States. 

It is not, however, needful to ask whether this third part of 
the United States will be largely peopled within ten, twenty, 
fifty, or a hundred years. These periods are brief in the 
upbuilding of States, as in the life of the human race. We 
need not ask whether or not our statisticians are correct, who 
reckon on a population of a hundred million in the year 
1900; or whether there will be two hundred million at the 
bi-centennial. Nor need we examine the grounds of the 
statement in the new edition of the British Encyclopaedia, 
that, if the natural resources of America were fully devel- 
oped, it would sustain a population of thirty-six hundred 
million, and that it is not improbable that this number may 
people America within three or four centuries. We need not 
ask how soon Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, 
Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming will number ten million, 
twenty, or forty, since it is only a question of time when 
these regions will be practically filled with a grazing, farm- 
ing, mining, manufacturing population, — a New West, less 
densely crowded than the Atlantic seaboard, or the Pacific 
shore, or tiie swarming valley of the Mississippi, yet sup- 
porting no small share of the American people. 

It is enough for the purpose of this paper to state that 
there is now a population of more than half a million in Col- 
orado, New Mexico, and Utah ; and that emigrants are now 



THE NEW WEST. 45 

pouring into almost every part of the New West every year ; 
and that the most practical business men in the country, who 
are conversant with the movements ot" population in Amer- 
ica, are taking most positive action with reference to the 
immediate occupancy of Colorado arid New Mexico, and the 
developments of a growing trade in this new Western coun- 
try. It is noteworthy that the Eastern newspapers are 
beginning to issue editions in Spanish, and that systematic 
efforts are made to introduce trade into Spanish America. 
In a single year, in which Mexico imported twenty-nine mil- 
lion dollars worth of cotton stuffs, the United States furnished 
little more than one-tenth. In 1877 the imports of the 
United States from Mexico amounted to nearly fourteen and 
one-half million of dollars; in that year we sold to Mexico 
goods amounting to only four and one-half million. Is it 
not time for the railway king to unite the Republics.? Impor- 
tant railways have been begun, looking toward the Southwest, 
upon the ground that the region to be passed through is 
already a very remunerative one for traffic, and that it will 
be soon occupied by a more dense and more prosperous 
population. The results are fully justifying the confidence of 
those who have engaged in the work. 




HIGH SCHOOL, DENVER. 

HOMES. 



Under the shadows of The Sierra Madre are already grow- 
ing up some of the most home-Hke and attractive towns in 
America. As an illustration, I will speak somewhat fully in 
respect to the community with which I am best acquainted. 
Colorado Springs has a population of six or seven thousand 
people, upon a spot where antelopes were feeding nine years 
ago, and where the Indians were taking scalps only a little 
before that. It stands upon a table land, gently inclining to 
the south. The soil is a coarse mold, through which the 
summer showers or melting snows easily filter, leaving dry 
walks and roads. The town has twenty-five miles of trees, 
upon streets a hundred feet wide, or avenues of one hundred 
and forty. Four rows of trees upon one street extend two 
miles. A school-building costing twenty thousand dollars, 
and comfortable houses of worship, indicate the character 
of the people. This colony and the one at Greeley, are the 
only ones in the State where liquor selling is forbidden in 
every deed of land, and in the policy of the local government. 
A test case, recently carried to the United States Supreme 



THE NEW WEST. 



47 



Court, establishes the Right of the Colony Company to 
seize any estate upon which liquor is sold. The cost of 
living is not materially different from that in similar com- 
munities in older portions of the country. Water for 
domestic purposes has been introduced, at an expense of 
eighty thousand dollars, from the melting snows at the foot 
of Pike's Peak. It is clear as crystal. Every flower-garden 
or green lawn can have a fountain with jet forty feet high. 
The irrigating ditches run between every broad walk and 
every roomy street, swift as mountain torrents, or sluggish 
as meadow brooks. 

Near the town are farm lands well situated but not yet so 
fully occupied as to supply the wants of the growing town. 
It cannot, however, be advised that those who are doing 
well elsewhere should for light reasons move far to new coun- 
tries ; and none should move without sufficient means of 
subsistence to keep them for some months until occupation is 
found. The opportunities for earning a livelihood are abun- 
dant in a new region, but time is needful to develop these 
opportunities. One should never land in Colorado with so 
shallow a pocket as to be put to distress if he does not find 
immediate employment. But a faithful, energetic, econom- 
ical, persevering man cannot fail to do well in the agricultural 
or Gfrazinsf districts in the neisrhborhood of some errowinc: 
town, if he takes time and has means to wait. These towns 
are near the base of the mountains, from Cheyenne to Trini- 
dad. Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont, and Boulder offer 
good homes ; and the agricultural interests arc more fully 
developed in the northern portion of the State. Denver, the 
commercial center of the State, is well watered and shaded, 
with comely houses amid grass plots and flower gardens. 
There are scores of hamlets near the base of the mountains 
both north and south of the Divide which are very attractive. 



THE SCENERY 



I OUGHT not to speak of personal likes and dislikes in Col- 
orado. But if I were questioned sharply, I should admit 
once for all that I am out of all conceit with the Rocky 
Mountains for being dry, and distant from the sea-shore. If 
the ocean boundary could stand now where it did during cer- 
tain past ages, I should feel quite content with the arm of 
the ocean touching the foot-hills. A residence upon the high 
grounds eastward would have permitted one to look across 
blue fields of lupine to the blue waters and the snow- 
clad mountains. This presence of the atmosphere of the 
sea would effectually break up the long drought in Colo- 
rado, which would be better, to my thinking. I confess to a 
strong liking for mud, rain, storms, fog, and wind from the 
sea. But the characteristic scenery of the Rocky Mountain 
plateau has certain compensations. 

Morning by morning, if I go upon my housetop, I look out 
upon the limitless plains ; or I ride far up the shoulder of 
Cheyenne Mountain, and get a wide vision of this silent sea 
stretching to the eastern horizon. The plains are not flat, 
but undulating like broad and shallow basins, extending for 
hundreds of miles. When in the bottom of one hollow you 
cannot see over the rim, which may be half a mile or a mile 
distant. In the winter time after a snow-storm, the snow 
lies longest upon the southern sides of these basins ; and the 
face of the plains seen from a height, is like that of the 



5o 



COLOR A DO AND 



ocean when marked with white-caps. This peculiar configu- 
ration is modified by the courses of the larger streams, along 
whose banks the country is often level as a floor, and flanked 
each side by bluffs. There are also many dry creek-beds, 
or chasms cut by sudden tempests. 

If I sometimes make excursions over these vast treeless 
areas, I am impressed with their solitude, as if I were in a 
little boat alone very far from shore. The most faithful pony, 
in crossing a belt blackened by prairie fires, will feel the 
intense solitude so sharply as to refuse to eat his grain, save 
in a little ravine made by an old water-way. There can be 
nothing more desolate than the view from a slightly rising 
ground, where the eye, searching the whole horizon, sees 
nothing save a plain withered by fire, without tree, shrub, 




THE NEW WEST. 5 I 

grass, or living thing; not a bird in the sky, and the 
summer sun burning with furnace heat. 

The scene is changed to the grotesque, if, upon my home- 
ward way, I come upon what appears to be a field of unnum- 
bered potato hills, thoroughly alive with projecting noses and 
disappearing tails, as if a minute tribe of woodchucks were 
struggling into the world, or the inhabitants were turning 
their squirrel tails to the sun. But the prairie dog is not so 
interesting as the jack-rabbit in the sage-brush. This desert 
shrub, with gray-tinted leaves, grows to a height of from 
three to five feet, and the strangely-twisted stalks are often 
four or five inches in diameter. It is good fuel. There is 
also a small white sage, of use for winter grazing. In some 
districts these bushes are alive with jack-rabbits, as if spring- 
ing out of the soil, and as suddenly disappearing. Some- 
times we see the antelope. Within a few months they have 
been feeding within a mile of my house. 

The most delightful feature of the plains in summer is the 
multitude of wild flowers, the desert blooming with beauty. 
Indeed, the mountains, as well as the plains, are often car- 
peted with flowers so that a mountain side is seen to be blue 
at considerable distance. Upon the streets and parks of 
Colorado Springs, and the banks of the Monument, we find 
the scarlet cypress, and gorgeous sun-flowers, the tiger-lily, 

the prairie pink, the blue-bell, the wild rose, the white- 

« 
fringed spirea, the cactus (pale pink or scarlet), the sweet 

columbine, heliotrope, blue gentian, clematis, larkspur, butter- 
cups, daisies, violets, primroses, poppies, verbenas, wild 
geraniums and morning-glories. Mountain slopes unsightly 
with fallen timber and rough boulders are fairly ablaze 
with cypress. 



52 



COLORADO AND 



The unsurpassed wonders of Glen Eyrie, Queen's Canon, 
the Garden of the Gods, Manitou Mineral Springs, William's 
Canon, Ute Pass, the Falls of the Fountain, and Cheyenne 
Canon — all within five miles of my home — attract tourists 
from all the world. Any one of these famous resorts would 
make the fortune of a watering-place in the East. Professor 
Hayden says that he never saw so wonderful a combination 
of grand scenery in the neighborhood of any other medical 
springs.^ These springs, with secret sources in the Meta- 
morphic Rocks, " resemble those of Ems and Teplitz, and 
excel those of Spa."^ 




IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS. 



If I look out from my house-top in the early morning, I 
see in the northwest, the vermilion rocks of the Garden of 
the Gods lifting their heads above the mesa. My friend 
Lewis N. Tappan has told me that it was in August of 1859 
that a company of six or eight, including himself and Cable 
and Beach, surveyed the town site of Colorado City. Cable 

^ Preliminary Field Report, p. 45. 
-Wheeler's Survey, Vol. iii., j). 619. 



THE NEW WEST. 



53 



was the first to explore among the towering vermilion 
rocks ; and he returned, saying that it was fit for a garden of 
the gods. This was the first naming. That two old negroes, 
Jupiter and Juno, early had a garden upon the stream near 
the gateway, led a later visitant to bestow the same name 
upon this locality. 




CHEYENNE CANON. 



Bear Canon, Crystal Park, Red Canon, Blair Athol, Mon- 
ument Park, and Austin's Glen are near at hand. Manitou 
Park — the famous "Cradle of Peace," and the marvelous 
petrified forest, are not beyond easy driving. Bijou Basin, 
and the wonderful mountain views seen from almost any 
part of the Divide, offer still another attraction within a 
half-day journey. 

What is a Canon.? If you are wise, you will first inquire, 
What is a burro } The burro looks very much like an over- 



54 COLORADO AND 

grown jack-rabbit, rough-coated, half-starvecl, of meek and 
disconsolate look. You may see him courageously bobbing 
along the road, swinging his great ears as if at perfect peace, 
and plying his small mouse-colored legs with such vigor that 
he can easily carry three hundred weight. If you are 
thoughtful to save your brcatli in rough mountain paths, 
and not too thoughtful of your dignity, you will mount the 
burro, draw up your legs, let your feet dangle instead of 
dragging upon the ground, and then I will show you a canon. 
It is neither of the caiions I have named, but a canon. 

Crossing and recrossing a wild stream we enter amid fir 
trees between walls of rock from three hundred to eight or 
ten hundred feet high, and five or four or two hundred feet 
apart, or narrowing to twenty ; the walls are often perpen- 
dicular, and rugged with towers, cones, or domes of rock. 
Sometimes the sky is a mere ribbon of blue, or again we 
are in a deep amphitheatre of naked rock. Often, however, 
the evergreens have obtained a foothold in the crevices, and 
the cedar and the spruce stand amid fantastic rock figures. 
Immense trees are growing upon the banks of the brook ; 
which is making music in strange harmony with the sound of 
the wind, harping upon pinnacles of rock or singing among 
the pines. We hear the cry of the young eagles mingling 
with the roar of the torrent. Our further progress is 
perhaps barred by a precipice, over which the water is fall- 
ing some hundreds of feet. Some of these rifts in the Colo- 
rado mountains are penetrated by the railway, winding under 
walls two thousand feet high. These places by daylight are 
often sufficiently uncanny, and weird beyond expression by 
moonlight. When, as it sometimes happens, there are min- 
eral springs, cold or hot, bubbling or steaming, between 
these massive walls, we cannot wonder that the Indians used 



THE NEW WEST. 55 

to hang votive offerings upon the trees near by, or to cast 
them into the mysterious waters. 

Morning by morning, with the f^rst light of the day, I turn 
my eyes to the immense masses of rock whose white crests 
rise against the western sky. I live upon the edge of a sea 







of mountains, uptossed in wildest confusion for the space of 
three hundred miles westward. The mountain area within 
the limits <di Colorado alone is as large as New England ; 
and its base is as high as the top of Mount Washington. 
The White Hills set down in one of the Colorado parks 
would make no great addition to the scenery. Mount Wash- 
ington and his compeers would be lost and very likely 
unnamed amid a crowd of more than two hundred peaks rising 
from four to six thousand feet above the plain ; and they 
would be overshadowed by nearly a score of mountains two 
thousand feet higher than the crown of New England. 
Mount W^ashington, if in Colorado, would be counted as one 
in this crowded range. Within the limits of this one State 
there arc twelve hundred miles in length of mountains, in 
the main range and the spurs of the main range, averaging 



56 COLORADO AND 

six thousand feet above the plateau upon which they stand. 
Switzerland, so far as relates to size, could easily be put into 
a pocket of Colorado. One of the Rocky Mountain parks 
would easily conceal within its high granite walls one of the 
New England States. The ravines of the Rocky Mountains 
are commonly sharper than the most precipitous slopes of 
Mount Washington. 




LA VETA PASS. 



Standing day by day against the western sky is this 
uplifted picture of grand mountain side and summits con- 
stantly varying under magic play of light and shade. The 
rocky spires and changing shadows of Cheyenne Mountain, 



THE NEW WEST 5 7 

seen four miles to the southwest of the town, gives constant 
delight to every eye. Pike's Peak rises not far off, and 
smaller mountains plant their feet within a mile or two of the 
town. In winter the violet tints of early morning change to 
golden at sunrise, and then the great range shines like pure 
silver in the sun. Pink is followed by gray and by white in 
rapid succession at night-fall. And the sunshine upon the 
western slope of the mountains is reflected in the atmosphere 
in a white light along the whole line of the saw-toothed hori- 
zon after sunset. Sometimes under a hot winter sun, we see 
a delicate veil of rainbow coloring upon the sky, caused by 
the rapid evaporation of snow upon the mountains ; or the bow 
is painted by a light fall of snowy sleet upon the hills. 

In the heated summer I take great delight in the nearness 
of the mountains, so close at hand that one can easily see the 
details of shadowing rock or cool ravines, I can see moun- 
tain walls rising each side of deep valleys, so standing that 
they can easily echo to each other in a thunder-storm. I 
need not go far from my home to walk or ride into quiet 
glens with flowing fountains, rocky streams, a comparatively 
abundant foliage and flowers, with mountain walls and mass- 
ive peaks rising on every side. In this respect my home is 
more favored than are those towns which are too close under 
the hills to admit of fair prospect, or which are too distant 
for easy approach. I have sometimes fancied that on a 
summer morning at Denver even the distant mountains 
themselves look hot, shimmering in the broiling sun. 

I can well imagine, however, the delight with which one 
hails the first view of the mountains if crossing the great 
plains, when — a hundred and fifty miles away — the blue 
peaks can hardly be distinguished from the sky. The long 
land journey prepares one to imagine that perfect repose can 



58 COLORADO AND 

be found under the shadow of snow-clad peaks. And when 
one comes so near the dark foot-hills as to see their table and 
castlc-rocks and quaint shapes; and when he enters the deep 
ravines, climbs to the shoulders of the lower mountains, and 
gazes on the snowy range near at hand, — he is likely, if a 
novice in mountaineering, to feel no disappointment in his 
first acquaintance with these gigantic ridges. If, however, 
he has seen the ice-clad peaks of Europe, he will find that 
the dryness of the Rocky Mountain atmosphere has deprived 
him of the masses of snow and ice which are the glory of the 
Alps, and he soon learns that the peaks arc more easily trav- 
ersed than the needle-pointed mountains of Switzerland. 
With only one-fourth of the Alpine rainfall, our Colorado 
parks must be content with lakes smaller and less frequent 
than those that shine at the feet of the highest crests in 
Europe. But no one can ever become so familiar with the 
finest scenery of the world as to be without enthusiasm in 
entering the rocky ravines of our American Alps, in following 
the water-courses between precipitous walls, in threading 
the forest paths, in wandering over the bare summits, and in 
standing upon the brink of sharp precipices of two or three 
thousand feet, and gazing over the immense breadth of moun- 
tain masses brought to view, their pines, their parks, their 
heads of rivers. The storm-clouds of any great mountain 
range must always arouse the beholder; the strange echoing 
from peak to peak, and the swift movements of the rain, can 
leave no beholder indifferent. The varied phenomena of 
mountain districts in summer and winter, the growth and the 
decay of foliage, the new-fallen snow, the tonic atmosphere, 
the strange effects under sun and shade, will for tlie time 
so delight the true mountaineer that he will not querulously 
deprive himself of the highest enjoyment of to-day in 




CHEYENNE FALLS, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS. 



6o COLORADO AND 

disadvantagcously comparing the Rocky Mountain plateau, 
its peaks and parks, with the Andes or the Himalaya. 

For myself, wander where I will, I can never forget those 
wildest, strangest experiences in which, for a moment, I have 
seen things unlawful to utter, glimpses of glory in our third 
heavens ^ — -the tops of our mountains. If, standing upon the 
edge of a precipice, you see the valley below filled with 
clouds, and the sun suddenly appearing, and you behold, 
projected upon the clouds, a complete circle of the rainbow, 
you are likely to remember it ; so long, at least, as you 
remember the brilliant canvas of any earthly painter, which 
you have seen adorning ancient church or gallery in a far-off 
land. He who will watch from a common house-top on 
dreary plains, the summer tints following daybreak, as they 
touch and retouch the mountain picture in the west, can 
have at daily command mornings out of paradise. 

I cannot urge any one to live in Colorado, or even to visit 
it. Whoever crosses the silent and solitary plains from the 
eastward will feel disappointed that he has come at last into 
that half of the United States where there is no greensward 
without irrigation. The country will look more naked and 
desolate — save in late May or early June — than he could 
easily have believed possible. And the dust or the hail, or 
petty inconveniences of travel in the inn or the market, will 
prove more vexatious than one had anticipated. And the 
mountains themselves will be at fault — perhaps not so lofty 
at first sight as one had dreamed. Those who have good 
homes, and are doing well in business, need not restlessly 
wander into new regions. And those whose very rest- 
days must be spent in the lap of luxury do wisely not to 
travel too far to find new means of annoyance. But if there 
is any pressure of business, if one must seek the opportu- 



THE NEW WEST. 6 1 

nities of a new country ; or if it is absolutely clear that the 
Rocky Mountain plateau is the best place for a particular 
patient fleeing from disease ; or if, for any wise reason, one 
seeks a home, or even long vacation days, in Colorado, he 
may be glad that in the land of his exile he finds all those 
things most needful for a permanent home, — abundant 
resources for doing business, a wholesome climate, and pict- 
uresque surroundings. Perennial pastures in which cattle 
thrive with little more care than the fish in the sea ; a rich 
soil producing abundant crops under the touch of water ; the 
most wonderful mines of precious metal the world has seen ; 
a climate dry and sufficiently equable, with — most commonly — 
warm days and very cold nights in winter, and cool nights in 
summer; home-like towns, with school and church, pleasant 
gardens and pure fountains ; and mountain scenery sufficiently 
attractive to draw almost the entire population of towns into 
tent-life in summer, — these are some of the considerations 
weighed by those who seek new homes in Colorado, and which 
go far toward making them content in their new home, and 
which make them cling to it and eagerly return to it. We miss 
the varied foliage and the carpet of green which covers the 
moist half of the continent, and we miss the surging of the 
ocean ; but, living not for grass or leaves or spray, we are 
content with the work in hand, and lead lives of thankfulness 
as we see the means for abundant bread for our children, and 
as we look upon the natural means of health by which wc are 
surrounded, and as we lift up our eyes to the everlasting hills. 




SUMMIT OF ITALIAN MOUNTAIN IN THE GUNNISON DISTRICT. 
Hieght, 13,255 (eat. 



SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION. 



Looking out from my house-top I see, within five miles 
circuit, geological formations which represent each of the 
grand periods of our world's history. The granite of Chey- 
enne Mountain and Utc Pass illustrates Azoic time. The 
Paleozoic ages are represented in the Silurian beds of Glen 



THE NEW WEST. 63 

Eyrie, Cheyenne Canon and "Williams' Canon, where they 
rest upon the granite, and in the lower and upper Carbonifer- 
ous belts north of Manitou, Glen Eyrie being in the north- 
east corner of the belt. McFerran's coal-beds contain fossil 
plants. In Mesozoic time, the Triassic formation appears in 
the Garden of the Gods, the belt running north ; a parallel 
Jurassic belt is found at short distance east of it ; the Cre- 
taceous formation underlies Colorado Springs town site, and 
fossils are abundant. Certain Tertiary hills toward Monument 
Park, and Austin's Bluffs upon the east, illustrate Ccnozoic 
time. It is only thirty miles to volcanic rock upon the north. 
Professor Hayden states that there is here "an area of 
about ten miles square that contains more material of geo- 
logical interest than any other area of equal extent that I 
have seen in the West." ' 

The Rocky Mountain system is composed of a series of 
ranges extending from six hundred to a thousand miles east 
and west. The ranges are of two kinds ; the one granite 
(granitoid) in nucleus, and the other basaltic. The eastern 
portion is granitoid ; and the cones of the Sierra are 
volcanic- " It seems probable that a portion of the Rocky 
Mountain range was outlined at an early period ; * that it has 
grown, as it were, through successive ages up to the present 
time." ^ The several ranges comprising the Rocky Mountain 
system occur upon former lines of weakness in the earth's 
coast, along which at varying intervals there were elevations 
and depressions ; the disturbing force being propagated from 
the east or east of northeast.'* " The Rocky Mountain system 

^ Preliminary Field Report, p 4 

•^ Hayden's Annual Reports, 1-3 in one vol., p. 125. 

^ Hayden's Eighth Annual Report, p. 40. 

* Wheeler's Survey, Vol. iii ; Geology, pj). 498-99. 



64 COLORADO. 

is the result of four especially marked upheavals : the first at 
the close of the Carboniferous, the second at the close of the 
Trias, the third at the close of the Cretaceous, and the 
fourth during the Tertiary. Of these, the first and third 
were the most general in their efifects." ^ 

The ranges parallel to the main ranges are lower, descend- 
ing like steps. The trend of the mountain ranges is north- 
west and southeast, so that passing along the eastern flanks 
from north to south, the minor ranges or foot-hills run out 
one after the other in the plain ; sometimes several of these 
ridges run out at once, forming a notch or depression several 
miles westward toward the main range, together with side 
rifts or water-courses in the mountains north and south. 
These localities give unusual facilities for studying the geo- 
logical structure in detail. ^ The most remarkable example 
of this westward depression into the heart of the mountain 
range occurs at Colorado Springs.''^ This depression, extend- 
ing around the northeast side of Pike's Peak, was filled with 
water during the Silurian age, although the ridge north of the 
Peak was then high enough to keep the water from crossing 
westward. The elevation of the ridges centering in Pike's 
Peak, at the close of the Carboniferous period, emptied the 
bay and left the shore line nearer what is now the plain.'* 
At a subsequent time, the Fountain Creek so deepened the bed 
of the ancient bay as to give still better facilities for studying 
the formations in their consecutive relations. "There is an 
unusual development of the Triassic or red group, and below 
it from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet of reddish and gray 
sand-stone quartzites with intercolated beds of clay of varied 

' Wheeler's Survey, Vol. iii ; Geology, p. 561. 

- Hayden's Annual Reports, 1-3 in one vol., p. 126. 

•' Ibid. ■' Hayden Seventh Annual Report, p. 204. 



GEOLOGICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP 



Colorado Springs and Vicinity 




I The area east of this line, is Ligiiitic. 

II. The area between the dot line and the dash line, is 

Cretaceous. 

III. The area between the dash line and the line indicated 

by two dashes and two dots, is Juras^sic. 



IV. 



(3-E OI-jO C3- 



rhe area be 
two dots 



V. — — — I'he area between 
and the dot an 




O.^^I_i KIB^S-. 



;en the two lines of two dashes and 
Triassic. 



i west line of two dashes and two dots 
lash line, is Silurian. 



VI. 
VII. 



— The area west of the dot and dash line, is Granite. 

— The area included by the continuous line, is Car- 

boniferous. 

^ Coal outcrops. 




GLEN EYRIE. 



THE NEW WEST. 



69 



thickness, probably Carboniferous, and below this a group of 
limestones more or less impure resting unconformably on the 
Metamorphic rocks containing well-defined Silurian fossils." 
" The opportunity for special studies is as complete as could 
be desired." ^ " Nearly all the elements of geological study 
revealed in the Rocky Mountains are shown on a unique scale 
in this locality.'"'^ 




CROSS BEDDING LIGNITIC SANDSTONE, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS. 

After the elevation of the Silurian beds at the close of the 
Carboniferous, a shallow sea still covered the valley of the 
Fountain and the Garden of the Gods. The red sandstone 
was probably derived from the wash of the red porphyritic 
granite along the foot-hills toward Denver.'^ The Front 
Range during the supposed Triassic period, formed a vast 
shore-line, and the sediments of the red beds were deposited 
on the base against the sides of the granite ranire.'* These 



, ' Hayden's Seventh Annual Report, p. 34 

- Hayden, Annual Reports, 1-3 in one vol., p. 126, 
^ Hayden's Seventh Annual Report, p. 205. 
■• Hayden's Eighth Annual Report, p. 43, 44. 



70 



COLORADO. 



sandstones were probably deposited in horizontal layers, and 
afterwards elevated by the further upheaval of the ridges 
centering in Pike's Peak.^ "The elevation of the great 
Front or Colorado range carried up the sedimentary forma- 
tion which originally rested on its sides or summit, and the 
uplift seems to have been nearly or quite vertical." ^ This 
"great uplift of mountain ranges, though imj^erceptibly slow, 
V, as a unit in action " in changing the position of the sediment- 
ary rocks. '^ "The elevatory force seems to have acted ver- 
tically, bending the overlying sedimentary strata like metallic 




IDEAL SECTION, 

Showing the manner in which the great diversity of surface dip is probably produced. 
Surface Section near Glen Eyrie, Colo.'' 

sheets, so that within a few yards of the nearly vertical beds 
the same are horizontal or nearly so. This explains the 
abruptness with which the mountains seem to rise out of the 
plains."-'' The continuous vertical strata in the Garden of 
the Gods have been partially worn away by the action of the 
watei^ and weather, leaving isolated massive monuments.'' 

1 I layden's Eighth Aiimial Report, p. 43. -Ibid,]) 40. -^ Ibid, p. 43. 

*This is copied from a cut in Hayden's survey. I wish to acknowledge my 
great obligation to the courtesy of Dr. Hayden and Major Powell in providing 
me copies of several cuts for this work. '" Hayden's Eighth Annual Report, p. 43. 

'^ Ibid, p. 43. 




WILLIAMS 



CANON, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS 



72 COLOR ADO AND 

The study of stratified geology can probably be carried on 
to better advantage in this than in any other locality in 
America. Williams' Canon is an open book in which a geo- 
logical class can learn more in one hour, than by some days 
of study in a region less favored. One may follow the canon 
two or three miles through a narrow gorge with walls rising 
from three hundred to five hundred feet on either side. "At 
the entrance to the caiion the red beds rest on a yellow-gray 
limestone which passes down into an arenaceous limestone 
with a reddish tinge containing well-marked Silurian fossils. 
The inclination of all the beds is thirty-five degrees, and the 
mass runs high upon the mountain side, resting uncomformably 
on the coarse feldspathic granite. The lowest beds of sedimen- 
tary rocks are rather coarse sandstones, and conglomerate 
made up of water-worn quartz pebbles, with very irregular 
laminae of deposition, the whole reminding one of the Potsdam 
group. About two miles up the canon the Silurian beds, 
inclining southeast eight to ten degrees, rest on the feld- 
spathic granites, which are most distinctly stratified, the 
strata inclining about north thirty-five degrees." ^ " There is 
considerable variety in the aggregate of beds here, which may 
be regarded as Silurian, and we may conclude that the Pots- 
dam group is quite well represented, and that it is quite possi- 
ble that some of the higher divisions occur. These rocks 
require a still more careful study." ^ 

Monument Park is a place of much interest. " It lies 
south of West Monument Creek, and is an elliptical basin, 
about two miles in length from east to west, and three- 
quarters of a mile in width north and south. It extends 
from Monument Creek westward, where it is bounded by 

1 Hayden's Survey, Seventh Annual Reisort, p. 35. - Ibid. 



THE I^EIV WEST. 



n 



the ridge of sandstone which forms the main hog-back. The 
columns and monuments are found in two ridges that run 
lengthwise through the Park. These monuments are from 
twelve to twenty-five feet in height, and arc composed of 
sandstones of the Monument -Creek group. The lower third 




MONUMENT PARK, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS. 



74 COLORADO AND 

of the exposed rock is fine-grained, containing argillaceous 
layers, and also carbonaceous shales. Above, the sandstone 
is very coarse, becoming almost conglomeritic. It is from 
the breaking down of these layers that the local drift, found 
along the edge of mountains, is derived.^ The capping of the 
monuments is a dark ferruginous sandstone conglomerate, 
very hard, the sarid and pebbles being cemented by iron. 
This layer is about twelve inches thick, and being so much 
harder than the underlying sandstone, has been more suc- 
cessful in withstanding the eroding influences ; and in some 
places it extends continuously over a number of the columns." - 

Evidence of glacial action is found in this same region, 
near Colorado Springs. The marks are not only discovered 
along the eastern sides of the mountains northward, but south 
and southeast of the town there was in the glacial period a 
sheet of ice covering a large extent of country.'' 

When a tropical sea was breaking upon the crags of the 
foothills, palms were growing upon the shore. My neighbor 
picked up a fossil palm leaf three feet long, a little north of 
the town. Upon one of the ridges near the Garden of the 
Gods, Professor Kerr found Saurian remains within three 
miles of h;;j class-room. It is not difficult to find petrified 
stumps or logs in position near the town. The agate fields 
and the jasper are within easy walk. A sapphire of great 
value was found upon the bottom lands near my house. 
Within a day's ride there are petrified stumps sixteen feet in 
diameter; they were twenty-five feet high before the stone- 
choppers attacked them. Near by there is an extensive bed of 

1 'I"he mesa west of Colorado Springs is composed of this drift. 

2 Hayden's Seventh Annual Report, p. 200. 

3 Wheeler's Survey, Vol. iii.. Geology, p. 428. 



THE NEW WEST. 7 5 

fossil insects, centipedes, bees, butterflies, and a vast variety 
of flying and creeping things in stone. The microscope 
shows the feathery scales of the butterfly still unruffled, 
forty thousand to the square inch. The Tertiary strata of 
the Rocky Mountain plateau are richer in fossil insects than 
any other region in the world. 

The great plains and mountain districts of Western 
America offer to-day the most attractive resort in the world 
to the student of geology. Colorado College, whose beau- 
tiful building of pink volcanic limestone rises upon the 
banks of the Monument near my house, is surrounded by 
the most remarkable formations on the continent. There 
is no better location for one who wishes to pursue out-of- 
door studies in geology. 

The important discoveries of new fossils upon the Rocky 
Mountain plateau have attracted great attention in Europe. 
Unknown species of animals and plants are so abundant, 
that Professor Cope has obtained from the ancient sea and 
lake deposits of western Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and 
Idaho, nearly three hundred and fifty species of vertebrate 
animals, of which he has made known to science for the first 
time more than two hundred species. One summer yielded 
to him one hundred new species. Incredible numbers of 
fossils — monkey, snake, lizard, tiger, turtle, rhinoceros — 
indicate a great harvest, if trained men are put into the 
field. Birds with teeth and strange creatures excite the 
surprise of scientific men. Kansas has yielded thirty species 
of saurians within a few years ; all Europe, sixteen in a 
century. The researches of Professor Marsh have made a 
new era in paleontology. When the New West is as sys- 
tematically explored as Europe, which has been overrun 
with such minuteness by competent geologists, the results 



COLORADO AND 



will prove a most important contribution to the scientific 
knowledge of the world. 

" There are many districts," says Major Powell, " in which 
the ' country rock ' is composed of incoherent sands and 




RHODA'S ARCH. 
Sawatch Range, South River, near Antelope Park. 

clays ; sometimes sediments of ancient Tertiary lakes ; else- 
where sediments of more ancient Cretaceous seas. In these 
districts ]:)erennial or intermittent streams have carved deep 



THE NEW WEST. 79 

waterways, and the steep hills are ever washed naked by 
fierce and infrequent storms, as the incoherent rocks are 
unable to withstand the beating of the rain. These are 
known as the bad lands of the Rocky Mountain region." ^ 
These are regions most favorable to the discovery of new 
fossils. " In other areas the streams have carved laby- 
rinths of deep gorges, and the waters flow at great depths 
below the general surface. The lands between the streams 
are beset with towering cliffs, and the landscape is an 
expanse of naked rock. These are the alcove lands and 
cafion lands of the Rocky Mountain region." '^ Through such 
a region is cut the deep gorge of the Colorado River of the 
West. When this river becomes familiar to the eye and to 
the hammer of science, and all the treasures of this wild 
West are made known, there will be fewer imperfections in 
the geological records. "Still other districts have been the 
theater of late volcanic activity, and broad sheets of naked 
lava are found ; cinder cones are frequent, and scoria and 
ashes are scattered over the land. These are the lava-beds 
of the Rocky Mountain region. In yet other districts, low 
broken mountains are found with rugged spurs and craggy 
crests. Grasses and chaparral grow among the rocks, but 
such mountains are of little value for pasturage purposes." '^ 
We have then here a world in making. The early processes 
are evident, and regions waste for other useful purpose are of 
surpassing interest to the geological student. 

And it is in this very region, that astronomical observa- 
tions can be conducted under peculiarly favorable condi- 
tions. The most eminent astronomers are of the opinion 

^ Arid Land Report, p. 20. ^ Ibid. ^ Ibid, 




CLIMBING THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO. 



THE NEW WEST. 8 I 

that our knowledge of the heavenly bodies would be vastly 
increased by planting one of the best telescopes in the 
world upon some mountain plateau, in a clear atmosphere, 
and where the sky is free from clouds the greater portion 
of the year. It seemed at, one time as if the project to 
establish an observatory upon the Sierra Nevada was likely 
to meet this want ; but Mr. Lick's gift will now enrich the 
University of California upon the coast. Colorado Springs 
is six thousand feet above the sea, and it is easy to find in 
the neighborhood a higher altitude, if it be desirable, where 
the conditions of climate are most favorable. It is well 
known that the usefulness of some of the best astronomical 
apparatus in the world is greatly limited by location upon 
the coast. 

In respect to the unrivaled facilities for scientific educa- 
tion in this remarkable region, men of foresight and ample 
means are furnishing the instrumentalities needed, so that 
the homes in the New West may not lack the best culture 
of the world. It would be indeed strange, if it were a matter 
of choice that the young people should be half educated, 
ill-proportioned, narrow, and self-conceited, in a country 
where the development of the resources so largely depends 
upon the highest attainable scientific skill, and where the 
means are so abundant for securing the best scientific 
schools of the world. . Men of native refinement and liberal 
culture, who gather wealth from the mines of the New 
West, will be swift to aid instruction in Natural Science. 

" Most earnestly I believe," says a writer whose eyes are 
never weary in beholding the forms of these mountains, and 
whose fame is known to all literature, " that there is to be 
born of these plains and mountains, all along the great 



82 COLORADO. 

central plateaus of our continent, the very best life, physical 
and mental, of the coming centuries." In the first four 
years of the decade now closing, thirty-three million dollars 
were given by private donors to the higher education in 
the United States. The annual gifts are from four to eleven 
millions. " All things considered," says President Eliot, 
"there is no form of endowment for the benefit of mankind 
more permanent, more secure from abuse, or surer to do 
good, than the endowment of public teaching in a well- 
organized institution of learning." 

A handful of poor students gathered at first in a barn at 
Old Cambridge ; and there sprang up the University, which 
has flourished century after century : lines of kings have 
reigned a little while and given place to others, but the line 
of scholars, earnestly searching for truth and nobly con- 
tending for it, has not failed, nor will until the brine of 
the British seas ceases to be salt. 

When, then, we seek homes in new regions, it is of the first 
interest that the founders of the New West are profoundly 
in earnest to build the school and the college. A wholesome 
climate, innumerable herds, exhaustless mineral resources, 
can never furnish homes for the American people unless 
there are built upon the slopes of the Sierra Madre educa- 
tional institutions which will make their vivifying influence 
felt throughout no small portion ot the central regions of 
America; as "the Mother Mountains " give rise to mighty 
rivers, — the Athabasca, the Columbia, the Father of Waters, 
the Colorado of the West, the Amazon and La Plata. 




MAP OF 

_ NEW Mi:xico 



%r««^- 



Sc«]< of MiIm 
p « M 30 4jO 5I> 




FORT GARLAND. 



NEW SPAIN. 



That part of the State of Colorado south of the Arkansas 
River, and New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and California, 
were formerly parts of Spanish America, under the name of 
New Spain. Of the population of Mexico, to-day, one mil- 
lion are of Spanish descent, three millions of Indian descent, 
and four millions of a mixed race, Spanish and Indians, com- 
monly called greasers. This is about the same proportion 
which obtains in New Mexico. We have thirty thousand 
of these people in southern Colorado ; we have nearly a 
hundred thousand of them in New Mexico. Besides this 



THE NEW WEST. 



85 



population, we have in New Mexico nearly ten thousand 
Pueblo Indians. They dwell in strange houses, — building 
up first one story, perhaps twelve feet high without any door 
or window, and climbing up by a ladder ; then there is a little 
platform, and then there is 'another story built up some ten 
feet high with doors and windows in this second story ; then 
they climb up still another story and descend into the rooms 
below by trap-doors in the floor of the roof; and in this way 
they build up perhaps five stories, — the top fifty feet from 
the ground. One of these blocks will contain two hundred 




TAOS PUEBLO. 



and fifty persons There are two of these buildings at Taos. 
They have been built some three hujidred years or more. 
Nearly ten thousand people in New Mexico are living in 
this style of house. Little children are at play upon the 
tops of these stair-like homes ; and the dogs, even, become 
skilled in climbing the ladders. The house-keeping arrange- 
ments are of so primitive a sort that the ladies have very 
little to do, except to sit out upon the roof in the sun and 
converse together. The people arc very industrious in their 
farming operations, raising good crops. 



86 



COLORADO AND 



Religiously, they arc fetish and fire worshipers ; having the 
pleasant habit of rising early in the morning and going out 
to look for the sunrise, hoping that some morning Monte- 
zuma will come from the East ; and then they will go forth 
to a little bridge over the water-course at sunset, and 
look for the going down of the light, and observe certain 
forms of adoration. In connection with these singular build- 
ings which I have described, there are underground rooms. 
You may go down a little orifice, which is very much like 
the mouth of a jug, and, having once descended below 
ground, come into a little circular room some twenty feet in 
diameter. The air is made to pass through it by under- 
ground passages. These are their places of secret worship 




NEW MEXICAN CART. 



and sacred dancing ; and it is in evidence that in some 
fiiicblos there is still maintained in one of these secret places 
the holy fire, which has not been out for three hundred years. 
They have been taught that the fire must never go out till 
Montezuma re-appears from the East. They have their own 
priesthood. But this worship does not at all hinder their 
being good Catholics ; and they have a Catholic church, and the 
papal priest goes frequently to collect their money and hear 
confessions. There are churches in New Mexico, in which 



THE NEW WEST. 



87 



there are the symbols of the Catholic worship, and also upon 
the walls the image of the rainbow, or the sun, and various 
symbols which have been used from very ancient times by 
these Pueblos in worship, — the very walls themselves wit- 
nessing to the mixing of Pagan and Catholic service. 

Some of these unique Pueblo dwellings are built upon cliffs 
three hundred feet high, like that at Acoma ; and they can 
be approached only by clambering up on the debris of fallen 




rocks, and then by steps cut out of the living rock, and then, 
perhaps, climbing immense timbers placed near the top, the 
throwing down of which would entirely cut oft' all access to 
the dwellings above. There are in southwestern Colorado, 
considerable areas of the ruins of houses formerly occupied by 
these people. Some of them are perched upon the walls of 
precipitous canons eight hundred feet above the roaring 




mliii 
'i ili 

CLIFF-HOUSES, RIO MANCOS, COLORADO, 700 FEET ABOVE' THE RIVER. 



THE NEW IV EST. 



89 



waters, set like swallows' nests in a little cavity in the rocks. 
And there are steps cut in the side of the living rock by 
which to ascend to them. These houses were probably built 
from three to five hundred years ago at a time when these 
peaceable, quiet Indians, who originated in the far south of 
this Continent or South America, were very much disturbed 
by the incursions of the northern red Indians. The mounds 
of the Rio Mancos are overgrown with piiion-pine and 
cedar. "There is scarcely a square mile in the six thousand 
examined," in the San Juan region, chiefly in southwestern 




INDIAN PICTURE WRITING, 

Colorado, says Hayden's Survey,^ "that would not furnish 
evidence of occupation by a race totally distinct from the 
nomadic savages who hold it now, and in every way superior 
to them," 

If the cliff dwellings of Colorado are not so celebrated 
as the remains of Petra in the East, they are, at least, more 
accessible to the American public. These remains of pri- 
meval races in America are discovered throughout a great 
extent of country, — in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah 
and Nevada. Painted and glazed pottery, stone implements, 

J Report of W. H. Holmes. 



90 



COLORADO AND 



fragments of matting, tied bundles of sticks, — tied up 
centuries since, — pictures cut upon walls, and other relics 
of a departed people, excite the interest of the explorer. 
The models of cave dwellings, low land settlements, and cliff- 
houses of the San Juan, which liavc been presented by the 
United States Government to the South Kensington Museum, 
have attracted attention in Europe. 




PUEBLO POTTERY. 



Twelve centuries since, the country southward from Col- 
orado to the Isthmus was peopled by the Toltecs. They 
were, according to Humboldt, in the tenth century more 
civilized than the nations of northeastern Europe. But their 



THE I^EIV WEST. 



91 



palaces fell into the hands of the Chichemecs, who soon 
yielded to the Aztecs, advancing from the north. The 
culture of these people at the time of the Spanish conquest 
is recorded in the pages of Prescott. It is well known that 
one of the first things the Romanists did, on arriving in the 
country, was to gather and burn the historical records of the 
natives, extending over eight centuries. It remains, there- 
fore, to train enthusiastic laborers, who will enter this new 
field in the ancient land of the Toltccs and Aztecs, and there 
attempt to read in ruins the record destroyed by the barbaric 
priests of a former age. Careful research will meet rich 

reward. There are 
Indians to-day in 
the New West, who 
represent in fair 
measure the semi- 
civilization, super- 
stitions, and relie:- 
ious faith, of those 
who possessed the 
land before the wild 
and savage tribes of 
W^irh I recent years ; races 
which flourished and perished before 
the European stock was planted on this 
Continent. The condition of those 
races whose history is yet unwritten, 
— or which is written only in cliffs, 
caves, mounds, and lake-beds, — will 
invite the attention of thoughtful students in the New West, 
which comprises in its area the most ancient relics of man 
in America. 





ANCIENT INDIAN TOWER AND CLIFF-HOUSE?, RESTORED. 



THE NEW WEST. 9 5 

The seven thousand Navajo Indians in New Mexico are 
a very interesting people ; they are the finest Indians 
upon the Continent. In respect to the mechanic arts 
they stand much higher in the scale of civilization than 
other tribes ; and they are much interested in grazing 
industries, having immense flocks of sheep. It has been 
observed by thoughtful students of history, that barbaric 
populations have risen in the scale of manhood through 
pastoral life. Those who have given most attention to 
solving the problem of Indian civilization, have had great 
success in conducting industrial education among the Indians, 
especially when they have sought to develop in their wards 
the desire to accumulate cattle. Multitudes of that race 
which has roamed the great plains and herded ponies for 
centuries, will eventually become the herders of the New 
West. The increase of the Indian population of the country, 
and the capacity of the race for civilization, indicate that 
Providence has a future for them ; an honorable future — if 
even-handed justice, the school and the church, have a hand 
in their training. 




NEW MEXICAN PLOW. 




ADOBE FIRE-PLACE. 



OLD SPAIN IN NEW SPAIN. 



I SPEAK of these Indian races in order that it may be 
more easily understood that nearly the entire native popula- 
tion of New Mexico is Indian — practically so. Seven- 
eighths, as I have explained before, are descended from 
the southern American Indians, or they are of mixed race, — 
only one-eighth being of Spaiiisli descent. These are 
the persons who to-day are plowing the ground with 
crooked sticks, and threshing their grain by driving goats 
over it ; having the customs observed many centuries 
since, and which now obtain in some of the oldest and 
least cultivated of the nations of the world. The majority 
of these j^eople were slaves, peons, till the emancipation 
proclamation of- Mr. Lincoln. This being so, it is easily 
seen how it is that they should have been kept in the lowest 
grade of civilization. They have been systematically neg- 
lected by the so-called Christian civilization under which 



THE NEW WEST. 97 

they have been living for three hundred years. At the 
time New Mexico was received into the United States 
as a Territory there was only one school in the country ; 
and there had never been more than one in all the historic 
time before. Some eighteen years ago, the question was 
brought before the Legislature of New Mexico whether 
they would have a school law and establish public schools; 
they almost unanimously voted that they would not : and 
when the question was put to popular vote there were 
only thirty-seven votes in favor of it and five thousand 
against it. 

At the present day, if a person visiting this portion of 
New Spain, were to go to a community of a thousand persons 
and inquire about the school taught there last winter, — 
they are only held about two months in the winter time, — 
he would find it attended by about twenty boys. The 
girls do not go to school. In these schools there is some- 
times a teacher who cannot read or write ; being appointed 
on account of his political influence. The children are poor. 
Occasionally fragments of newspapers are brought in for read- 
ing-books. In the average Hebrew store in the country no 
text-book is found above the Spanish primer of the lowest 
grade we use in our schools. The common text-book is the 
Jesuit catechism in Spanish. In more than half of these 
schools there is no luiglish taught. The American popula- 
tion is very small, probably — at present — not more than 
one-fifth of the whole population. 

There are private papal schools at Taos, Mora, Las Vegas, 
Santa Fc, Bernalillo, Las Cruces and Albuquerque. 

It is easy to see, that, in a community so constituted, those 
who have it in mind to manipulate a population in opposition 
to our laws and Government, can find a very good foothold. 



98 COLORADO AND 

When Edward Everett Hale was in Rome, just before Gari- 
baldi entered the city, he bought a little newspaper, hardly 
fourteen inches square ; there was not one word of news in 
it in regard to Garibaldi, but it was two-thirds filled with an 
article upon New Mexico. The Jesuits at that time, prepar- 
ing to rise and forsake the sacred city, were securing persons 
to plant a colony in New Mexico, so that a considerable num- 
ber of these people, born in the worst cities of Southern 
Europe and educated in Spain, gathered in a company and 
planted themselves in New Mexico, establising themselves at 
two points. Las Vegas and Albuquerque. They have been 
systematically introducing their priests ; wherever one is dis- 
placed they introduce a Jesuit priest as his successor. They 
established a newspaper, as well printed as The Nation, and 
in form much like it. They set out to obtain political con- 
trol of the Territory. Two years ago they had a majority in 
the Legislature, and passed a law, giving" the Jesuits peculiar 
immunities and privileges for carrying on educational work. 
This law was vetoed by the Governor ; and passed over his 
veto, as soon as he left the room. The head of the Jesuits, 
with his official robes on, sat by the side of the Speaker, and 
urged the passage of the bill. It was annulled by Congress, 
the law being in violation of the Constitution of the United 
States. These men have now taken the strongest possible 
ground against public schools. They have sent an official 
notice to the press of New Mexico, warning them to beware 
of advocating i)ublic schools. They have picked up the worst 
cases of scandal in the United States, during the last twenty- 
five years, and have retailed it out to the Spanish population, 
stating that this is what they may expect in New Mexico if 
they introduce the public school system. In every way, the 
ignorant Mexican population is warned not to have anything 



THE NEW WEST. 99 

to do with this terrible public school system. The common 
exhortation is, — "Be Mexicans! Be Mexicans ! " It is com- 
monly said, — "This is a Catholic country ;" and no Prot- 
estant ideas can have any foothold. So successful have 
been the efforts of these men -who thrive under our liberties 
in order the better to destroy them, that they prevented the 
passage of a good school law by the legislature of i8cSo. 

They have at the season of the year when our Saviour's 
Passion is celebrated, an order of men who, in the most 
horrible manner, celebrate those sad scenes which occurred 
in Judea in ancient times. The men seize upon stocks of 
cactus, which grow four or five feet high, covered with sharp 
thorns, and use them for lashing their naked bodies. They 
crown themselves with sharp thorns, they bear crosses of 
heavy timber, and in sad procession go forth to a place where 
one of their number is to be fastened to the cross as if for 
crucifixion. There is hardly a year goes by in which there 
are not some persons who die under this strange ordeal. 
These are the scenes which take place every spring-time in 
southern Colorado and throughout a large part of New 
Mexico. 

In the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1877, " H. H. " gives 
some account of these people : — 

"There still exists among the Roman Catholic Mexicans 
of southern Colorado, an order like the old order of the 
Flagellants. Every spring, in Easter week, several of the 
young men belonging to this order inflict on themselves 
dreadful tortures in public. The congregations to which 
they belong gather about them, follow them from house to 
house, and spot to spot, and kneel down around them, sing- 
ing and praying and continually exciting their frenzy to a 
higher pitch. Sometimes they have also drums and fifes, 



lOO COLORADO AND 

adding a melancholy and discordant music to the harrowing 
spectacle. The priests ostensibly disapprove of these pro- 
ceedings, and never appear in public with the Penitentes. 
But the impression among outsiders is very strong that they 
do secretly countenance and stimulate them, thinking that 
the excitement tends to strengthen the hold of the church on 
the people's minds. It is incredible that such superstitions 
can still be alive and in force in our country. Some of the 
tortures these poor creatures undergo arc almost too terrible 
to tell. One ot the most common is to make in the small of 
the back an arrow-shaped incision ; then fastening into each 
end of a long scarf the prickly cactus stems, they scourge 
themselves with them, throwing the scarf ends first over one 
shoulder then over the other, each time hitting the bleeding 
wound. The leaves of the yucca or 'soap-weed' are pounded 
into a pulp and made into a sort of sponge, acrid and inflam- 
ing ; a man carries this along in a pail of water, and every ' 
now and then wets the wound with it, to increase the pain 
and the flowing of the blood. Almost naked, lashing them- 
selves in this way they run wildly over the plains. Their 
blood drops on the ground at every step. A fanatical ecstasy 
possesses them ; they seem to feel no fatigue ; for three 
days and two nights they have been known to keep it up 
without rest. 

"Others bind the thick lobes of the prickly pear under 
their arms and on the soles of their feet, and run for miles, 
swinging their arms and stamping their feet violently on the 
ground. To one who knows what suffering there is from 
even one of these tiny little spines imbedded in the flesh, it 
seems past belief that a man could voluntarily endure such 
pain. 

" Others lie on the thresholds of the churches, and every 



THE NEW WEST. lOI 

person who enters the church is asked to step with his full 
weight on their bodies. Others carry about heavy wooden 
crosses (eight or ten feet long), so heavy that a man can 
hardly lift them. Some crawl on their hands and knees, 
dragging the cross. Crow.ds of women accompany them, 
singing and shouting. When the penitent throws himself 
on the ground, they lay the cross on his breast and fall on 
their knees around him and pray ; then they rise up, place 
the cross on his back again, and take up the dreadful journey. 
Now and then the band will enter a house and eat a little 
food, which in ail good Catholic houses is kept ready for 
them. After a short rest the leader gives a signal, and they 
set out again. 

"Last spring, in the eighteen hundred and seventy-sixth 
year of our merciful Lord, four of these young men died 
from the effects of their tortures. One of them, after 
running for three days under the cactus scourge, lay all 
Easter night naked upon the threshold of a church. Easter 
morning he was found there dead." 

Yet, some years since, a bill to admit New Mexico as a 
State passed the United States Senate by a political bar- 
gain; it was thwarted by the opposing party in the House. 
It is only a question of opportunity when New Mexico as 
it is, when Utah as it is, may be received into the Union. 
There is, however, in New Mexico a German Catholic ele- 
ment opposed to the Jesuits; and there are many young 
Catholics who stand openly for public schools. The better 
class of citizens in New Mexico oppose the admission of the 
Territory as a State until a good school law is enacted. 

When, therefore, we seek for good homes in the New 
West, we are little attracted to this foreign fragment of our 
republic, albeit New Mexico is, in respect to its natural 



I02 



COLORADO. 



resources, well fitted to sustain a large population. Those 
men, however, who have entered this region with enlight- 
ened ideas concerning public education, and who seek to 
plant an open Bible in the Territory, will soon be reinforced 
by sturdy emigrants of Eastern training, who will make short 
work with ancient systems of error and misrule. 




CHURCH AT SANTA CRUZ. 




MORMON FAMILY. 



UTAH. 



If, however, we now turn northward, we are again shut 
out of the privilege of planting the American home, the free 
school and the church, by organized Mormonism, resting like 
a blight upon an area three times as large as New England. 

Many persons have wondered that the Mormon system did 
not break down utterly, at the death of Brigham Young. 
There are few who know how thoroughly organized is this 
system. The Jesuits are not better organized than the 
Mormons. 



MAP OF ARIZONA 



Territorial officers and law-makers of Arizona have laid 
the foundations of one of the best public-school systems in the 
New West ; and as their mountains of silver are now echoine: 
to the whistle of locomotives, and two Pacific railways are 
pushing their lines across the Territory, it will not be strange 
if Arizona becomes a State before her next neighbor upon 
the East. 



S,'i(nliiH,'-il[lll 1,1 iJi I , '\ 




THE NEIV WEST IO9 

Mormonism is, at bottom, a carefully organized land specu- 
lation. One-thirteenth part of Utah can be irrigated. If 
you go north into Idaho, or south into Arizona, or into south- 
western Colorado, the Mormon leaders are everywhere spying 
out the most fertile valleys ; and then they send agents 
abroad to bring over emigrants from Europe. Some of the 
shrewdest men in Utah — who are not prejudiced by any 
special religious feeling in regard to the Mormon system, and 
who have not been so thwarted in schemes of personal ambi- 
tion that they have become prejudiced witnesses — state in 
regard to the Mormon system that it is at bottom a grand 
scheme for land speculation. The elders of the Mormons are 
most of them Eastern men, able to manipulate the whole 
Territory according to their own minds. They keep between 
three and four hundred land agents in Europe every year. 
These men go into the hamlets and cities of northern 
Europe, with lists of the names of persons who have settled 
in certain localities in Utah. They go into a little village 
and say, — 

" Here is Mr. Jones or Smith, who was once your neighbor. 
He is now in Utah, and has forty acres of land ; if you will 
go there wc will give you lorty acres." 

After describing the climate and the soil and the advan- 
tages of emigration, it is said to them that in order to avail 
themselves of these precious privileges they must be bap- 
tized as Mormons. It is a better system of religion than 
these poor peasants have had at home ; it is a step upward 
when they are baptized as Mormons. They come into this 
country, and receive their land under the United States 
Homestead Law, and they suppose the Mormon church gives 
it to them. These are very ignorant and degraded people ; 
and they at once come into a higher state of civilization, and 



no COLORADO AND 

have more material comforts than they had in their country 
or city life in northern Europe. 

The whole Mormon system is fastened together by secret 
oaths. It is historically true that the founders of the Mor- 
mon system were acquainted more or less with the secret 
orsfanizations that have existed from time immemorial in our 
older civilization, and they determined to adopt this ancient 
method, and adapt it to their own uses, in establishing a relig- 
ious system. The Mormons are baptized, but they are not 
brought into full connection with the church till they have 
been through the mysteries of the Endowment House. 
There are three degrees of oaths. Kneeling at the secret altar 
they vow to observe the Mormon laws in preference to the 
laws of the United States if the two come in conflict. They 
swear to stand by each other. In secret they nourish the 
purpose to keep out Gentile influences from the country. 
The polygamous marriages are always celebrated at these 
secret-society meetings. As there are temples -built for dif- 
ferent secret societies in the East, this Mormon Secret Soci- 
ety is building immense temples for the performance of their 
rites ; not less than three of which are costing each more 
than a million of money. The walls of these temples are 
nine feet thick, and they will endure as long as the Pyramids ; 
and the system itself will endure as long as the Pyramids, 
unless the people of this country are thoroughly aroused to 
the necessity for establishing education and a higher style of 
spiritual life, and put forth their utmost energies for the 
breaking down of the Mormon system by national legisla- 
tion. One-fifth part of the membership of the Mormon Church 
are church officers. It is as if every Protestant Church of a 
hundred members should have twenty church officers. They 
are some Apostles, some Bishoi)s, some Rulers of Seventies, 



THE NEW WEST. Ill 

some Erders ; they are so graded that the head of the Mormon 
church can through these officers reach every Mormon in 
any part of the country. And then they have the most 
admirable system of church discipHnc. 

The tithing system in Utah docs not go to enrich the priest- 
hood in any direct way. The Bishops receive no pay for 
preaching ; they are those shrewd men who understand how 
to get corner lots and understand how to form rings for 
making public improvements. The money for building the 
temples, and building the ditches of the great irrigating 
system, is raised by the tithing system. The administration 
of these works is in the hands of church officers, who through 
this method enrich themselves. Now, having control of the 
church, having control of the water throughout the whole 
country, if there is the humblest Mormon in the most 
remote valley among the mountains who rebels in any way 
against the Q)s\ViXc\i, \\\ii.y take tJic zvatcr aivay from him. It 
is a perfect whipper-in. The man is left without help, and 
all his farming operations must cease if he in the least rebels 
against the church. When a Presbyterian minister a year 
ago last summer moved from a community where there were 
both Gentiles and Mormons among whom he had been work- 
ing, and went into a community where they were all Mor- 
mons in order that he might labor among them, the two men 
who hauled his goods were Mormons. One of them was dis- 
ciplined for doing this ; he confessed and was received back 
into the church ; the other man was excommunicated. And the 
minister found that in this new settlement no one would sell 
him food, and he had to go back to the place he came from to 
get food for his family. 

Among these people there is very little demand for any 
high spirituality in the services of the church. The leaders 



I I 2 COLORADO AMD 

of the community arc engrossed in affairs; and they are not 
the kind of men who will elevate these low populations pour- 
ing in from the lowest grade of society in northern Europe. 

The gentleman who has said more in defense of the Mor- 
mon system than any other Gentile, not defending it, but 
seeing more ground for toleration than any one else, has said 
that — by observation extending through many years — not 
more than one sermon out of ten has any reference in it at 
all to religion. There are meeting-houses in every ward of 
Salt Lake City. It is only in the summer-time that they 
meet in the great Tabernacle ; in the winter they meet in 
these meeting-houses. Here, and throughout the country, 
the Bishops gather the people together and talk with them 
on Sunday about their farming operations. Dr. Sheldon 
Jackson, who attended one of their gatherings a little while 
since, states that the sermon was on the advantage of having 
blooded stock. The sisters as well as the brethren were 
invited to subscribe for the jHirchase of the new stock before 
the service was closed. 

These people do not demand any high grade of education. 
There is a local law by which a certain amount of money is 
furnished for schooling, but it is so little that the schooling is 
pieced out by the payment of tuition, so that there is hardly 
a free school in Utah ; and these schools are under the control 
of the church officers. These schools are held in their meet- 
ing-houses; they are properly parochial schools; they give a 
little instruction in the rudiments of education, and they 
propagate the doctrines of the Mormon faith, — teaching that 
God has a bodily form, that Jesus practiced polygamy, that 
polygamy is essential if one will have rank in heaven, teaching 
the doctrine of celestial marriage, by which persons here 
upon the earth may be married on behalf of dead friends or 



THE NEW WEST. 



113 



eminent statesmen, in order that they may have the felicities 
of heaven. It is said that the spirit of George Washington 
could not get to heaven if he did not have another wife, and 
so these Mormons have been patriotically — and repeatedly 
— married in behalf of George Washington. 




MARRIED IN BEHALF OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 



It may be very easily imagined that, in such a state of 
socictv, there are some intelligent men who come from over 
the water who arc much disturbed on account of the state of 
things they find. Especially under Brigham Young's admin- 
istration, a great many broke away from their religious tenets 
and the hold of the church, on account of the abuses of the 
system. And then there are multitudes who desire better 
schooling for their children. The Gentile population — of per- 
haps twenty thousand — has established private schools to some 
extent, and the contrast is very readily seen by Mormon 
parents. At this time it is supposed that about one-third of 



THE NEW WEST. Il5 

the Mormon population of Utah hang somewhat loosely to the 
system. There are perhaps one hundred and twenty thousand 
Mormons in Utah and neighboring territories. 

The method by which one-third of the Mormons can be 
most easily torn away from the system is by introducing good 
schools. From what has been said in regard to the organiza- 
tion of the church, their power of discipline, their occupation 
of every fertile valley, holding the whole Territory under 
foot, it is seen that it will be very difficult to introduce a 
Gentile element there which can improve matters. It is almost 
impossible to introduce farmers or men in other industries 
unless they are approved by the Mormon leaders. On 
account of lack of present material to work upon, it will be 
very difficult to promote the Gospel by the ordinary means of 
public preaching. The true method is to promote education 
and to get hold of the children, and such parents as desire 
better schooling. This method has been adopted to some 
extent, and carried on very successfully during some years. 

We look to such institutions as Salt Lake Academy to help 
solve the Mormon problem, as we look to the Christian 
academies in Santa Fe and Albuquerque to become fount- 
ains of fire in dark New Mexico. 

Salt Lake City is one of the most beautiful places in the 
world. The Territory will some day be filled with the pleasant 
homes of an enlightened Christian People. 




BLACK ROCK 



IDAHO, MONTANA, THE BLACK HILLS AND 
WYOMING. 



The vast area north of Utah and Colorado holds out 
to-day the strongest inducements to settlers. The peculiar 
characteristics of the New West, which are mentioned in the 
first part of this work, are nowhere more attractive than in 
the northern portion. 



THE NEW WEST. 



117 



Some parts of the country are indeed suffering very much 
for want of good training-schools for teachers; but Montana 
raises more money for schools than most of the States in 
the Union, in proportion to her population, standing the 
seventh upon the list. 

It would be a vast advantage to all the Territories if the 
counsel of the United States Commissioner of Education 
were heeded in the appointment by the national Government 
of Territorial Commissioners of Education, as other officers 
are appointed. This would be effective in bringing order out 
of confusion in Utah and New Mexico, and would be so 
helpful in the development of the best public school system 
in all new regions as to make them at an early date attractive 




IN YELLOWSTONE PARK 



ii8 



COLORADO. 



to those who are seeking homes in the New West. It is a 
remark of De Tocquevillc that good homes are at the founda- 
tion of all national prosperity. To establish good homes we 
need the school and the church. 




BUTTES AT GREEN RIVER. 



S ^ I ^ r! 

I ^^ ^ -^^ I 





